Social Media Related Tweets and Insights

From my Twitter account:

RT @jeffjarvis chronicles his prostate cancer surgery and encounter with the big robot: http://bit.ly/ojyi5

Doctors and dictation errors: http://bit.ly/3l8MxN

Dr. Charles Analyzes the Hippocratic Oath http://bit.ly/j2TOj - See who's most famous doctor in history of medicine http://bit.ly/363YDB

Tweets are not research articles - they are 140-character messages - please always go to the original source, links, etc. Tweets and links do not represent endorsement, approval or support. Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

Misleading Headline and Story on Anxiety and Dementia

"Staying Calm 'Prevents Dementia," is the headline on a BBC article today. Seems like an innocuous headline but in fact it is both wrong and misleading.As a group, older people who scored as "calm and relaxed" in their answers to a survey had a 50% lower risk of developing dementia over the next six years, the BBC reported. (There's another no-no: giving a relative risk figure without giving the

Teaching Journalism Ethics

Starting in May 2009, I'll be teaching a class in journalism ethics at New York University as part of the Science Health and Environment Reporting program. I've already selected several case studies--particularly with respect to conflict of interest in medical reporting. And I have lined up a media lawyer to come talk to the class about libel and other legal issues.Now I need a few good cases

How Will New Medicare Rule Play Out?

Medicare's new policy not to pay for 10 "reasonably preventable" medical mistakes seems good in theory. I'll be interested to hear from readers how the new rule, which goes into effect today, works in practice.

Press Fails to Say Who Funds Drug Studies

The news media often fail to report when a drug study has been funded by pharmaceutical companies, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Press accounts often use brand names instead of generic names when talking about medications.The first problem is a bigger issue than the second because it speaks to a larger point about conflicts of interest. (Using generics

Redesign at Healthfinder.gov

Check out the new design at healthfinder.gov, one of my favorite sites for reliable information about personal health. The site is brought to you by the folks at the US Dept of Health and Human Services but includes links to credible sources of information outside of government as well.

Abortion, Text Messaging and Free Speech

Verizon changes course on censoring text messages after it becomes the focus of a front-page article in the New York Times.Like a lot of other advocacy groups, NARAL wanted to keep in touch with like-minded folk by allowing them to sign up for short text messages. But when the abortion-rights group talked to Verizon about setting up such a service, the telecom giant balked. Abortion is just too